RE,eNTL. ReNEE: GoDIN A((IDEÑTAl\..'1 SLAMMED HER ftN6ER: IN THE "oaR of NCEPT J. R tHAT HAS No HA ,. HE L.AR HA5 A VoiLe - oP RAIE.P op N'NG SY ,e;.M, ßl.rr of'l(. MY ff"'bel< WAS AU6HT MY VOI E c. HAN0E rr wAS NO t..o 0eR \\OP N" .-- rr WAS, If< f :;opeN .'t rr WAS iHe: oN0E:5, 'feN S l:o {)S of MY I,tfe= ./ .. ---- ...". I JANET PoUND HAS SEEN oN ,.....E (I (UII Fo FIVE YEARS Wr3-'f2.fE L' r:: '(r<AV IN& &YP$fES,6ul MoS. of us AV A \' "- OU e IH, ;l --.- .... - \ 1 I AND .HAD AVERY IHINKS fHe- fEMALE NA AToItS 6Ef Mo E AT'TENI,oN 1: WoULD ve. .0 HAVE SoMé 6t"L.S 06L..E ME,6úT fA rr'S JUS, t5ee N "e, ,/ Alre!,\-r, \Je: . &e rr\..eM N , - - - - - =- - - -. ., "'" nr.. II . . . . ., 90 you LoMe WfíH 1HE: (Þ.R? llJl t I -.... ..... . - " ""- settled, he was pretty well known, too. An autographed photograph of Mr. Korotaev hangs, along with photographs of cosmo- nauts and other Russian heroes, on one of the green velvet walls of the Arbat, a popular neighborhood restaurant on Bnghton Beach Avenue. One recent evening, this picture at- tracted the attention of Alexandre Grant, who arrived here six years ago from Rus- sia, where he had been, among other things, a reporter for Molodoy Kommunzst, the monthly magazine of the Komsomol, or Young Communist League. Mr. Grant is now the news editor of Novoye Russkoye Slovo, the only Russian-language daily newspaper in the city-or, as he likes to say, "the only Russian daily in the West- ern Hemisphere"-but he is better known around town as the person who knows more than anyone else about the increased presence here of Russian organized crime. "He was sitting right in this restaurant that night in January, when he had a quar- rel with a man over a business matter," Mr. Grant said, in his accented English, referring to Mr. Korotaev and pointing to his photograph from a seat at a table near it. Mr. Grant went on to say that he had heard from his sources that the man Mr. Korotaevwas arguing with was a Russian. Mr. Korotaev and the other man went out of the restaurant together, leaving behind the other man's girlfriend, according to Mr. Grant's sources. "Then the guy shot Oleg in the head, he went back to the res- taurant, paid his check, and left with his girlfriend," Mr. Grant said. "There were fifteen other people in the restaurant that night, but none of them sawanything"- which is to say that no one would talk to the police. Mr. Grant does not know who the killer is, but he believes that some or all of those who were in the restaurant that night know. He also believes that the murder was a Russian-mob-related hit. "The detectives are desperate," he said. "They like to say that the reason they can't find the killer is that he has gone back to Russia. He hasn't. He's here. If the mur- derer were a stranger, every one of those people would describe him." Mr. Grant took a sip of vodka- Absolut vodka. (On being asked about his preference for Swedish vodka when he or- dered it, he'd replied, "I may be Russian, but 1'm not an idiot.") He is forty-nine years old and, thanks to a whitish beard and gold-rimmed glasses, he could pass for a poli -sci professor, but that is some- thing he would never want to be. As a youth, he had wanted to become a diplo- mat, but he is a Jew, and, he said, there was no place in the Soviet diplomatic corps for a Jew. In the press, stale and propagandistic though it was, he learned a craft and made a living, for a while. Later, he spent a number of years in pris- on for various political offenses, includ- ing having provided a British journalist in Moscow with a transcript of Joseph Brodsky's trial. He says that prison taught him to feel comfortable around crimi- nals. He has a cynically ironic perspec- tive on Soviet Communism. On the lapel of hIs blue blazer that night he wore a small K.G.B. pin. He'd bought it last fall in Moscow, he saId, from a beg- gar standing not far from Lenin's Tomb. Over a dinner of borscht and blini, Mr. Grant sketched his picture of the Russian organized-crime activities in this city. He estimates that in and around N ew York there are only a couple of hundred Rus- sian mobsters, and he says they are loosely organized, tending to come together in small groups to work scams-counterfeit- ing, credit-card fraud, pyramid schemes, and the like. The VIctims of these crimi- nal activities tend to be other Russian émigrés. Unlike Italian Mafiosi or Asian gangsters-or members of the Russian mafia in Russia, who, Mr. Grant main- tains, have an enormous influence on that country's fragile economy-the Russian mobsters here do not deal drugs. Nor do they run prostitution rings. "They try," he said. "But they've had problems getting into the business What they do is import some girls, but after about five days the other pimps in the area will find out and ask the police to shut down their enterprise. Another difficulty is that the Russian girls are very romantic, so they keep falling in love with their clients and marrying them." Unlike those who cover the activities of: for instance, the Italian Mafia here, Mr Grant does not get much of his in- formation from the police. Actually, he said, it is more likely to work the other way around The police have a hard time getting information on the street, he said, because Russians do not trust men in uni- form. 'The F.B.I. runs a classified ad in our newspaper asking anyone who has ties to organized crime to please come